An Original Post

Lest you be concerned that I have become unlazy, this post is simply a call for other people to do work for me.

There is a lot of talk about when/how/if/maybe/when China will overtake the US in terms of science output. However, almost all of the talk I have read is either panicked hyperbole (1 billion people!!!) or wanton conjecture. It should be possible to take into consideration objective factors and make some educated predictions. The obvious source I immediately turned to was 'Soccernomics'.* The book attempts to predict performance at the World Cup by three factors:

Population
GDP
Experience

It seems to me that those factors should do a pretty good job of explaining the variance in scientific output assuming 'Experience' was defined in some reasonable way, such as percentage of population with STEM PhD's. A factor related to personal freedom should be added as scientists with more freedom would likely be able to do better work. My first suggestion for such a factor is the 'Press Freedom Index' from Reporters without borders. Just to make our hypothetical unlazy friend's life harder, that person will have to take into account any correlations between the freedom index used and GDP.

Now, with such a model in hand, it would be relatively simple to look at economic predictions for three objective variables to see how long (if/when/maybe) it will take for Chinese science to overtake US science. If the multicollinearity** between GDP and the freedom index is properly handled, one could even compare the relative predicted science output between the States and China given multiple levels of Chinese freedom.

* I link the NYTimes blog post as I have not actually read the book, nor do I intend to.

** Yes, I did spend 5-10 minutes sifting through google results to find that word.